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Cocktail Menus of India

What has truly charmed the trade and tipplers alike about the country’s cocktail game, in recent times, is the constant reinvention. With a flourishing subculture of cocktail experiences, what is happening at bars, experiential dining places, even microbreweries, has evolved into thought-provoking concepts, nuanced storytelling, celebration of provenance and nostalgia in a bid to woo the oohs and aahs! We’ve bid adieu to the idea of creating a menu that’s split between families of cocktails and various other spirits. Now, celebrated watering holes look at menus as timeless plays and novels that are almost like collectibles. These menus have become a window into the host city’s glory, the country’s hidden crafts, and stories from the past, all served up with a dash of showmanship and sensibility-driven hospitality. More than a just post-work pit stops, they’ve become destinations worth a special journey. Bartenders too, are graduating to don multiple hats: Modern therapists, theatre artists, a ‘griot’, a confidant. Here is our selection of some of the most ingenious, intriguing and interesting bar menus that is sure to leave you shaken and stirred.

PCO BOMBAY, LOWER PAREL, MUMBAI

Eleven years on, the capital’s first speakeasy bar, PCO Delhi, still commands a queue every weekend. Their younger Mumbai outpost, once the home to a textile mill, celebrates its new menu in unique style. It’s an ode to the textiles of the city, and understandably, a tough act to follow up on in terms of menu or execution. To celebrate the heritage of Indian textiles, the team has tried to capture the journey from its inception to execution, incorporating their sheen, texture, and flavour of occasion as interpreted in a glass. Brocade, an ornamental fabric, has connections with Japan and America, and so the cocktails solicits a Bourbon and Umeshu. Smartly, it features a gold pattern to accentuate its rich look. To visualise the richness, the garnish is a chocolate disk dusted with gold. Another drink that captured my attention was Paithani, a 2,500-year-old, shimmering Maharashtrian woven fabric with gold zari  that’s worn on special occasions, which is also marked by cooking a karela (bitter gourd) sabzi. The drink is a mix of Pistola Reposado, an aged Indian agave spirit, vermouth, and karela liqueur. When was the last time, rather the first time, you went to a bar and found karela on the menu? This leap of confidence in itself is worth a cheer. And there’s more—Raw Silk, Kalamkari, Chiffon, Corduroy, Velvet… stay curious and experience them on your own. The menu also features a sample of the cloth to touch-and-feel, and generously mentions the names of the bartenders who have created these brilliant masterpieces. The bar has been raised!

FORT CITY BREWIN, HAUZ KHAS, DELHI

With Fort City, Ashish and Gautham set out to create Delhi’s first proper microbrewery. Adding a new flavour to the city’s beverages, it was only fitting that their cocktails captured Delhi’s essence as well. Their eight-drinks menu, called ‘Takht-e-Delhi’, is a delicately curated repository of stories, and an interpretation of the city’s eight forts, ruled by eight different dynasties. The menu begins from Lal Kot, Delhi’s first fort, and travels through Mehrauli, Siri, Tughlaqabad, Shergarh, Shahjahanabad, Firozabad, and finishes at the current seat, New Delhi. The creations are good enough to turn any one into a history enthusiast. They captured the emotion from each empire in these drinks, with flavour profiles that stretch between bitter, sweet, calming, or aggressive, all bound with tales from the era. Take for example Shergarh, home to Humayun’s Tomb, the first garden tomb in India. The tomb takes inspiration from the ‘Jannat Adn’, or the Garden of Eden from the Bible. Their confluence of the four rivers—water, honey, milk, and alcohol—marks the conclusion of the seven heavens and the initiation of the ‘Hasht Behesht’; the eighth heaven being reserved for gods and angels. The drink features Rosemary-infused gin, marking the greenery of the gardens, whey, which symbolises the river of milk, and honey syrup, finishing with red-hued bitters, personifying the tomb floating above the eighth heaven. Mehrauli translates into the famous Phoolwalo ki Sair, an annual celebration since 1812. A distraught Mughal queen vowed to visit the mosque of Khwaja Bakhtiar ‘Kaki’ on the condition that her son was released for mischievously shooting at the then British Resident at the Mughal court. The prince was miraculously released and the mother fulfilled her vow by presenting a chaadar (veil) of white flowers at the mosque. The priest, however, suggested she also visit the Yogmaya Temple, the only one dedicated to Lord Krishna’s sister. She obliged, marking the beginning of religious harmony in the city. The drink is an amalgamation of Jasmine-infused gin, vermouth, and orange bitters, with a garnish of green apple topped with brulee-ed red bitters. The green-red hued garnish symbolises the harmony between the mosques and temples of the city, to mark the era. Fort City’s menu narrates lost stories to its locals, and travellers alike, and, for a while, allows them to take pride in the city which is a living museum of monuments and a library crowded with storybooks.

THE BOMBAY CANTEEN, LOWER PAREL, MUMBAI

An institution unto itself, TBC is a rare feat because its food as well as drink offerings are just as remarkable. With constant innovation, its menus keep evolving to become a window unto the city. Over the past eight years, their cocktails menu has celebrated several facets of Mumbai’s fascinating urbanscape. From art deco buildings to street slang, to its famous talkies, to characters you will likely encounter at the promenade, they’ve all found pride of place in the glass. Now on to their fifth menu, the team has carved out iconic parts of the city and its mood at a certain time of the day. The menu starts from capturing Dadar’s flower market at 5 am and wanders through the bustling city in a kaali peeli taxi finishing sleeplessly in Bandra at 1 am. As the day and the rush of the city progresses, the style of drinks evolve accordingly—from morning highballs maturing to spirit-forward sippers er dark. Steering away from just gins and whiskies, TBC aims at showcasing a great cocktail that is indifferent to the choice of spirit. The idea: A well-presented, carefully thought out and curated drink will find takers, without focusing excessively on any specific spirit. Not just a play of spirits, even the ingredients are rather interesting. Rear View, for instance, exemplifies being stuck in traffic in the back of a cab at 11:11 pm somewhere in the city. This is a Tequila-based drink with a curious mix of black garlic, ginger, honey, and lemon. It’s brave to put garlic in a drink, and even more ambitious to have someone not just like it, but reorder and pay for it. Another one is Duty Free that makes a connection between Mapusa in Goa and Mahim Junction at 4 pm, exactly when the Mumbai-bound buses from Goa reach the city. Duty Free brings together Feni, Pinot Noir wine, Indian Sarsaparilla, pineapple, coconut milk, and ginger. Even for a sommelier, who works with flavours all the time, putting to bed all these nuances together sounds riveting. So if you’re a Bombay virgin and crave a crash course to the city in all its varying moods and whims, TBC helps you distil the journey through the prism of the glass.

SIDECAR, GK-2, DELHI

Adjudged among one of the world’s best bars, Sidecar is no longer considered to be just a watering hole, but a university learning for the drinks business, on either side of the till. Their new menu is the result of travels in all directions from the capital. It brings home the essence from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Eastern Himalayas, West Bengal, Karnataka, and more. ‘Arq—The Essence’ allows us to relive the nostalgia of familiar flavours and aromas, transporting us to shared memories of everyone’s wonder years. How can one not relate to the aroma of the tempering of curry leaves, or freshly chopped cilantro, the unofficial national garnish of all Indian cuisines? It could be as simple as the morning ritual of a cup of chai or the apres dinner luxury of a freshly crafted paan. I’m not a tea drinker, yet, Sidecar’s Tea Leaf cocktail featuring Bourbon infused with mountain pinewood tea that lends a whiff of smoky hues and a tannic mouthfeel, combined with the tart, earthy ginger and the sweetness of the whisky is a charming play of sorts. Simple, delicious, yet elegant, the drink is perfect for a balmy autumn evening.  If not that, catch the Darjeeling mugwort cocktail, which could be a bit of an acquired taste for Delhiites, but for the mountain people of Darjeeling, it serves as more than just a usual ingredient. Mugwort is a bitter leaf that acts as a medicine, mosquito repellent, incense, a herbal tea, and even used to flavour the local fermented drink ‘chhanng’.  With their signature attar from Kannauj, handmade chocolates from Mysore, Bengali Gondhoraj, and other celebrated ingredients, Sidecar draws on the tug of nostalgia to reconnect with the fleeting innocence of memories past.

EKAA, FORT, MUMBAI

To stand out of the crowd, you’ve got to stand alone. Ekaa does that on multiple levels to become the lynchpin of SoBo bars. From its inception, their drinks have been neat, with inventive storytelling, and driven by idiosyncratic personalities that elicit engaging conversations with the cocktail at hand. Ekaa’s new menu accentuates ayurvedic elements, without making a blatant in-your-face statement. The idea is an extension of what has been Ekaa’s food and drinks philosophy from the get-go-toying with under-appreciated botanicals and making them sexy! With cinnamon, cardamom, coriander bordering on mundane, it was expected for them to draw on herbs, botanicals, and eyebrow-raising ingredients into play. The team researched over 80 new ingredients, travelling between Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, Goa, the Himalayas, and Delhi. While most of these have found pride of place in the Vedas and Shastras, they are still new to the trade professionals and guests alike. Who would have thought that Ayurvedic doctors would be the new suppliers to the bar! Imagine the lure of Damanaka, Kapur Kachri, Talispatra, Anantmul, Timbur, Myrrh, and there’s more. The menu is simple, just an AI-drawn image of the champion herb or botanical, its botanical name, list of ingredients, place of origin, but without a mention of the style of drink—coupe, sour, highball—which then becomes a talking point, while guests wait to be enamoured. Here, storytelling is the key, hence the bar’s service style is relaxed, conversational, and solicits those who prefer the conforting cocoon of a slow life. Take Brahmi for instance; the bittersweet leaf provides cooling effects and enriches the body and mind alike, hence called the Brain Tonic. Marry it with the earthiness of a Japanese whisky and the grit and tannins of a red wine, sweetness of pears, and the aromatic goodness of cinnamon, and you’ve got a champion drink. If you’ve witnessed Shivratri celebrations, you know of Bael Patra. When it makes its way to Ekaa, Vodka, JasminE syrup, bubbles, and the leaves, form a Picantestyled charmer. For the uninitiated, trying Bael Patra might already be brave enough; to ease them in, a touch of smoked chillies adds the homely comfort similar to a local  thecha (spicy condiment from Maharashra).  This yin-and-yang of competing flavours, trying to curry favour with the new, while holding on to the comforting and familiar is how Ekaa is converting one drink at a time.

First published in India Today Spice, October 2023

Categories
Articles Cocktails

Raise the Bar

Distilling the perfect cocktail is an artful production: The idea, inception, curation, preparation, portions, presentation, nomenclature, the storytelling, and finally the actual taste test. India has finally risen to the occasion grabbing eight of the 100 top seats at the last Asia’s 50 Best Bars. This wave has brought to shore themed bars, with classy menus, interesting storytelling, with thought-provoking drinks, bites, and ambience to score both on the surprise and delight quotient. Here are some pit stops that mark the golden hour for Indian Mixology.

HOOTS’, Delhi

Imagine an intimate 16-20 seating space, candle-lit, with leather bound couches, and whiffs of the fragrant cigar leaf wafting through with Frank Sinatra gently cooing on a vinyl record. No barstools, no food menu. Push past an unpretentious, unlabelled white door that opens out to a spiffily- dressed bartender in a waist-coat on the other side, who greets you with a minimalist menu that capture a twist of classics and signa-tures. Hoots’ is a worthy embodiment of a prohibition-era speakeasy bar. What Hoots’ does well, and really well at that, are classics-inspired drinks that are technically sound and refreshing at the same time. The two-page menu featurees page one with twists on Old Fashioned, Negroni, Martini, Highballs, and Sours, and the other page showcases 10 signature drinks that are not named, but numbered. Setting a benchmark for poised hospitality with a thoughtfully-curated theme, Hoots’ is as much a find for hospitality professionals as it is for consumers who wish to enjoy a drink in quiet civility.

#no. 7
Albert's Old Fashioned

Poison of choice:  #no. 5 (with olive), #no. 7, Albert’s Old Fashioned

LAIR, Delhi

Garnish cocktails are gaining popularity in India now, and of these, Lair remains the new-gen kingmaker. When Jai Solanki, the acclaimed chef behind Asian Haus, Amma Haus, and others, forayed into setting up a bar, the unexpected was the least we could expect. Lair doesn’t disappoint; it is an upbeat drinking destination, with brow-raising goodness at the bar, and on the plate. The food is impeccable, but it’s the drinks here that grab eye balls and refill highballs. A four-part menu takes you on a journey with ingredients from across the country, distinguished by their complexity, sophistication, and technical prowess. They’ve single-handedly made Palomas and Picantes sexy again, and brought garnishes like nostalgia-stricken magic pops, niche and invigorating mocha canapés, lemon tarts, tea infused with dry ice, kaffir salt, and sumac powder, that your Instagram feed craves for. What Lair embodies is consistency, innovation, and smooth hospitality with truffle popcorn masquerading as their unofficial mascot.

Kozhikode Negroni
Chintapalli Gimlet

Poison of choice: 16th Century, Chintapalli Gimlet, Paloma, Picante, Sumerians

HOME, PVR DIRECTOR’S CUT, Delhi

This is easily one of the most attractive bars in the capital: Home is experimental, experiential, and intellectual. It boasts a cocktail philosophy that others can barely imitate or emulate. During ideation, the two ideas that gained stead were to create drinks that were timeless, and to champion minimalism. The result, a menu that takes nuanced inspiration from fermentation and the energies and power of the solar system. Home’s cocktails celebrate elements like Earth, balance, gravity, light, and the sun to name a few. The ambience offers a feeling of grandeur and the food & drink are right on cue. It’s one of the few bars that’s seldom loud, or busy, and solicits having conversations with the team. They’ve pushed definitions and boundaries of mixology, presenting techniques that are gaining global acclaim. For instance, one of their drinks looks and tastes like wine, comes in a wine glass, but is blasphemously served with a giant clear ice, and no garnish whatsoever. The new menu that’s yet to unfold will be purely vegetable based, something that’s utterly ambitious, but if done right, absolutely praiseworthy, I’m sure.

Equilibrio
Flora and Aqua

Poison of choice: Oromo, Equilibrio, Marsado

NATIVE COCKTAIL ROOM, Jaipur

The UNESCO Heritage-tagged Pink City has always echoed nostalgic destinations: Amber Fort, City Palace, Patrika Gate, Jantar Mantra, and the old walled city. Add to that a new destination–the Native Cocktail Room. It is located inside an old Kothi that doubles up as an unpretentious, unassuming heritage hotel on a silent residential by-lane of one of Jaipur’s civil colonies. A flight of stairs takes you up to the bar, which is a tiny world unto itself in this oyster of an old structure. This is a bar that is smaller than a hotel room’s pantry but dishes out consistent drinks at a pace that you can’t keep up with. The décor is reminiscent of Jaipur but the vibe says Rome, Melbourne, or even Delhi. The food here supersedes the drinks and the drinks supersede the fares. But what reigns is the hospitality of the husband-wife duo, who are still the face of the bar and as zealous as any hospitality legend you can think of. The drinks are named after cities of the country, embodying them in a glass, with just startling in appearance as in taste.

Jodhpur
Coorg

Poison of choice: Coorg, Valley Flowers, Zafran Sour, Jodhpur

COPITAS, FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, Bengaluru

If the precursor for complexity is simplicity, Copitas adopts it grandly. Much like a couplet by Ghalib or Juan Eliya that provokes the most profound emotion with a rare economy of words, the cocktails here opt for easy felicity. Built on the twin cheers of sustainability and nostalgia, their Greener Future menu is worth a capture in both memory and insta reels. Utilising all parts of a plant, the drinks are called Fruit, Flower, Leaf, Root, Stem, and Seeds, with flavour influences that are nostalgic and pick ingredients that make you smile. Something as simple as a peanut candy bar or a make-it-yourself paan, their drinks are theatrical without imposing forced grandiosity. What really impresses is their seriousness towards sustainability; even outside of the drinks they use discarded KOTs and slips for coasters, recycle old bills into seed bombs, and much more. The location itself should keep Copitas on your to-do list.

Flower
Fruit

Poison of choice: Seed, Root, Fruit

LIBRARY BAR, THE LEELA PALACE, Delhi

With institutions like Megu, Le Cirque, and Jamavar, the bar at The Leela Palace New Delhi had to be equally meritorious. For the longest time, their legacy was built upon the ‘library’ of spirits they carried, including the uber-rare Cognac Louis XIII Black Pearl (Rs. 1.5 lakh for 30ml). That ostentation apart, it was as much a victim of the lack of innovation as any hotel bar. However, with the cocktail revolution sweeping the country, the Library Bar stepped up. Finally, it now boasts a cocktail programme that deserves a special detour. Drawing inspiration from its name, their drinks are titled honouring books, songs, novels, movies, artists and sculptures. The bibliophile in you will be intrigued to hear all the stories that punctuate the menu. My favourite is the Song of Solomon, picked up from the Bible, taking inspiration from the holy wine that was prepared with herbs and sweetened with lavender. The clarified cocktail looks soothing and tastes uplifting. What Library Bar has done is daring–extending an invitation to the straight-drinks-swearing gentry of Luteyen’s Delhi into exploring the familiar, and they have done it with utter sophistication.

Big Bang
Scarlet

Poison of choice: Song Of Solomon, Gravity’s Rainbow

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Articles Agave Cocktails Spirits

The surge of Agave in India – A beyond the shots story

TEQUILA & AGAVE THEN

A decade ago, no party wrapped before a round of Tequila shots, followed by morning vows of never touching the spirit again. Those shots were simply about ‘give me something cheap, that I could gulp without tasting’. Neither was there any knowledge about the drink, nor any motivation to look beyond those cheap labels. And why would there be any? Who spent on shots anyway, right? The definition of your mid-20s wouldn’t even be the same if you were told those salt rimmed, lemon wedge-backed fiery liquids weren’t even pure Tequilas, definitely not the culturally-driven Mexican heritage drink. Whose heritage is built on shooting drinks anyway? All that is now changing, finally.

 

TEQUILA & AGAVE NOW

The pandemic moved us from straight drinks to cocktails and trying new spirits at it. What drove it was leisure drinking and their mixability. Those heavily aged, have-encyclopaedic-knowledge-before-approaching-me brown spirits were pushed away by easier, amicable white ones. While in India it was gin, pure premium Tequilas took the global pie. Since 2010, the market has doubled, it’s further growing ferociously, with the premium Tequilas peaking at an 83% fold! It’s probably amongst those rare categories that didn’t dip during Covid, instead it soared. There was all the time, and intent, to let go of those horrible past experiences, unlearn, and relearn about the drink that was never really befriended. And this newly discovered love for agave spirits and Tequilas is going to keep bars and imbibers spirited for a pretty long time.

 

AGAVE BEYOND TEQUILA

Once you go pure, you don’t return to that edgy firewater. Though ‘Tequila’ has been much bastardised into a common nomenclature for all things shots and made from agave, there’s an unexplored colony of drinks beyond it. Agave too, much like grains and grapes, isn’t the sole base, there’re many more. However, Tequila hails from a GI-tagged region of Mexico with certain quality and prestige attached, think Champagne in France, Scotch in whiskies, or Cognac in brandies. Within Tequila there’s a study of Puro and Mixtos, latter being a mix of base ingredients against a single origin 100% agave based spirit, generally considered much inferior but to mad scientist and a playful genius its allows the proposition to breakfree from the straightjacket of norms and definitions and experimenting unabashedly. Then there’s also the much cult, crafty, rural, and revered Mezcal which by all means is a connoisseurs’ and aficionados’ delight. There’s also Sotol, considered the lesser loved child of the family, that has its own status of sorts locally. And then there’re spots like Califonia, Japan, Australia, Peru, Venezuela, and of course India, that produce the spirit and keep it simply under the title ‘agave spirits’. If anything, even if we mistakenly call all drinks ‘Tequila’, it’s as expansive a proposition as most respected drams.

AGAVE IN INDIA

Patron, Don Julio, Corralejo, El Jimador, Herradura Tequilas and Creyente, Del Maguey, Clase Azul Mezcals have globally been drivers for the premium category, and now India has added to the list with its homegrown label, Pistola Agavepura. I’d happily sip on either and I do occasionally pick them over well-aged malts and rums. Rakshay Dhariwal, the suave hospitality superhero who heads SAZ, Ping’s Oriental, Jamun, and Asia’s 50 Best Bars ranker PCO in the capital, wanted to be creative during the lockdown and birthed Pistola. “Before the pandemic, we saw clients drifting towards premium Tequilas and asked us to source special bottles. These were proper 100% Puro de Agave labels, so they knew what they were drinking. I wanted to follow this shift. During lockdown I wondered how else can I get to people’s homes besides food, which we had been doing anyway. I thought of creating everything from bottled cocktails to tonic water, to our own gin, but settled for an agave based drink that’d put India on the map” 

Much like wines, ciders, rums, and cognacs, anything that’s made with fruits or plants is heavily influenced by provenance and terroir. Agave drinks are no different. India’s tryst with the plant goes back a couple of centuries! India has a ton growing wildly in the weirdest of places from Shimla to the Deccan Plateau. “When Queen Victoria visited India, she ordered planting agave bordering railway tracks to protect animals from hitting them”, Rakshay shares. Deccan Plateau’s red soil and rather barren lands graciously welcome the plant in its laps. It’s enough not only to cater to Indian palates, even to be exported. Who knew? And who knows what potential the Indian terroir holds? It may take the world by a storm, right? However, what’s foremost is purity. 

Maya Pistola Agavepura

PROVENANCE MATTERS

‘100% Puro de Agave’ is a spirit made purely from agave plants. If you’ve been drinking spirits under the (say) INR1800-2000 mark, chances are they aren’t Puro, instead they’re what’s called Mixtos, created from a variety of base ingredients. Though a dominant and essential part of the game, it’s not what’s driving the change. These Puro de Agave spirits offer an experience, a glimpse into the heritage of its producer, and will always be expensive. It takes seven kilos of agave to make a litre of Puro spirit, and agave isn’t cheap. Befriending the spirit is as geeky an affair as that of Cognacs, single malt whiskies, and age-statement rums. It solicits patience, trials, and indulgence. Social media plays an important role in driving these changes. And who influences better than celebrities?

CELEBRTIES STEP IN

Celebs have been biting into the agave craze since George Clooney got in and sold his label, Casamigos, for a whooping USD1 billion. Teremana (The Rock), Lobos 1707 (LeBron James), Cincoro (Michael Jordan), Villa One (Nick Jonas), Don Ramon (Pierce Brosnan) and 818 (Kendall Jenner) have all followed suit. “They definitely help the category grow and can open gateways to open craft spirits too”, says Bacardi India’s Jonas Ax who’s heading Patron. Rakshay too concurs, “they not only make people drink better, also add a certain oomph to drinks & rituals”. If Tequila has been the drink of the Hispanics, celebs’ endorsements definitely open the market to other communities. Though, there’re visible ups, there are some sour notes too. Kendall Jenner has been heavily criticised for everything, from sipping her tequila on ice to flagrantly stepping into an industry she knows nothing about just to make her even richer. Some believe the sheen of celebrity can divert attention from the nuances of Tequila, its provenance, and heritage, which actually make it a great drink. The fine line between homage and appropriation is blurring. However, for the Indian denizens, that’s a worry for a far distant future. 

BARTENDERS’ POISON

Be it neat, on ice, with a dash of sparkling water, or through cocktails, the agave spirits’ bug will catch you for sure. Considered the most mixable spirit, bartenders are halleluah-ing every passing moment. At the end of US’s prohibition era (circa1930-40s), cocktail revolution brought Margaritas to the fore and they’ve not really left, albeit TGIF and Ruby’s Tuesday’s awful syrupy concoctions. Picantes, Palomas, Margaritas, not only accentuate the provenance, prowess, finesse of the base spirit and are loved equally on either side of the bar. “Earlier it was gin, now there’s a rapid shift towards agave spirits. In our new menu, there are 8 agave based cocktails, a drastic increase from just 3. Agave spirits and spices go well, they do justice to Indian palates, and we’re trying to bring classics back with a new touch. Even our guest ask us, what else can we do with the spirit” shares Navjot Singh, head bartender of Lair, New Delhi, that’s single handedly responsible for bringing Picante in the limelight and making Paloma sexy again. 

Picante at Lair, New Delhi

WHAT DO WE DO?

Rakshay is already adding more shades to Pistola’s spectrum with a Joven, Anejo, Phoenix Anejo, and an interesting Rosa, a cabernet Sauvignon barrel aged Reposado with a pink hue. Patron has already made a honey and coffee flavoured rendition. Especially in India where there’s no right path to the spirit and a lack of definition for local produce, the opportunities are endless. And with the advent of Indian gin, conversations about flavours have only expanded. “There’s definitely a market for flavoured variants, we’re a population of 1.4billion, there’s space for everything, just not now”, Rakshay shares. Jonas too agrees “we’d like people to decode the spirit first and then move to flavoured ones, they definitely take the inhibition away and are imperative”.

Maya Pistola Agavepura - Rosa

India is already upping the revelries. Jai Solanki, the crafty chef and owner of Lair, New Delhi, is gearing up to open the floodgates for local palates and hosting the first-even Agave Fest in Goa in January. In the carnival spirit to Goa, it’ll bring together gastronomic meccas, revered bars and their mixologists, and connoisseurs alike over thumping music lineups, games and more over 6-7th January at W Goa. Who would’ve though we’d see that in India? If that’s not a sign, then what is?

Whichever way you look at it, this is not a fad. With this instant influx there’ll be a bubble that’ll burst, acting as an imperative balancer. Nonetheless, once you’ll befriend a pure agave spirit, you’ll not return to those edgy, rough, firewater of spirits that filled your shot glasses. And to that itself we can raise a toast. Salud !! 

First published on India Today Spice, November 2022

Categories
Articles

In Appreciation of Tamras Gin

It’s the Gin 2.0 era, and amongst the most exciting new entrants is Tamras Indian Dry Gin made by liquor first-timers Khalil Bachooali and Devika Bhagat. 

After about 20 gins on the shelves, we ask if we need more, and the answer is always YES! In 2014, there were 100 gin brands in the UK; by 2019 there were 750, and the numbers are still growing. There is probably room for dozens more in a country of our size, with its large bouquet of botanicals and unparalleled love for spirits.

But even among the new brands in the market, Tamras, which like most of them, is also based in Goa, stands out for its vast spread of botanicals, the manufacturing process, and even the personality of its bottle. It is also the first gin brand to open its gates to the public with a visitors centre in Colvale, North Goa, and a cocktail bar where the experience takes the gin a notch higher.

Of the two founders, Devika Bhagat was first introduced to gin by a friend in London in 2008, and she befriended the drink promptly. Khalil Bachooali drank whiskies till he met Devika, and as the rule goes, what she drinks, he drinks. He fell in love with gin as well. Devika is a highly respected screenwriter known for films like Manorama Six Feet Under, Bachna Ae Haseeno, Ladies vs Ricky Bahl (2011, and Four More Shots Please! on Amazon Prime, while Khalil produces TV commercials.

Khalil Bachooali and Devika Bhagat.

One rainy day in 2018, they found themselves  stranded in a London bar. With nothing else to do, they embarked on a gin tasting spree with the bartender. Like many other good stories that began over drinks, Tamras’s journey probably started here. After two years of backpacking in the gin universe, hunting for knowledge, wisdom, and botanicals, they dropped anchor in Goa in 2020, amidst the first COVID wave. They set up their company Adventurist Spirits Distillery, and began work on the distillery with help from Julia Nourney, an award-winning distiller from Germany. The process took about a year. They waited until the pandemic eased to launch Tamras in December last year, first in Goa and then Maharashtra.

Tamras is a Sanskrit word that means copper (tam) and extract (ras). It is also an ode to the copper-still distillation process they use. The ingredients they use are a complex combination of  16 botanicals handpicked from across the globe – juniper berries (Macedonia), coriander seeds, lemon verbena, orris root (Morocco), angelica root (Poland), black cardamom, cubeb pepper (Indonesia), grapefruit (Egypt), fennel, green cardamom, lotus flower, lotus seed, mausambi, Indian lemon, Nilgiri tea, and Indian mint (India).

What makes Tamras stand out further is the five-step production process. The base spirit is made from the finest Basmati rice procured from Punjab. They offered me a sip to taste when I visited the distillery. More important than the botanicals is the fact that if any gin-maker offers you a sip of their base spirit, that’s the first sign of quality.

The Tamras base gin is distilled with 12 of the 16 botanicals. However, whole citrus fruits, Nilgiri tea, Indian mint, and lotus seeds with flowers are distilled individually and separately because of their differing points. The five resulting distillates are finally combined slowly and reduced to the ‘imperial’ bottling strength of 42.8% over 28 days, ensuring their extended stay on the palate, which Julia learned from Cognac distilleries in France. In all, it takes at least two months before a bottle of Tamras is ready! No one does that in India.

With an encyclopaedic list of botanicals available in India, we have a problem of plenty. What to select and what to leave out is a challenge that every Indian gin maker is up against. And most end up with just a few ingredients to keep things simple. Devika and Khalil had no such inhibitions. As revealed earlier, they use as many as 16 botanicals from as many as six countries. In keeping with their company name, they have been genuinely adventurous.

I was lucky to have Khalil as my guide when I visited the distillery recently. He lives and breathes gin. He is enthusiastic, energetic, and dynamic. Keeping up with his energy level is challenging. It is a minimalist, well-designed distillery that could easily pass off for an artsy hotel’s lobby. The 230-litre German Müeller copper still, which they have named ‘Odysseus’, sits at the centre as the crown jewel. I tasted the base spirit, individual botanicals, and the five individual distillates. This was followed by the gin tasting process. I tasted it neat,  on ice, and with Indian tonic water. All of which provided their unique experience and a complete journey of sorts.

Taste-wise, Tamras provides a juniper-forward front that slowly makes way for the spices like cardamom and coriander, followed by green and orange citruses and mint, with tea closing it with a peppery zing on the palate. In a blind tasting, it jumps out of the glass for its vivacity. With a splash of tonic, the palate becomes playfully candied, with an elegantly rounded nose and a balanced flavour of spice, citrus, and earthy flavours.

My fondest memory of the distillery visit was the stories about how Khalil and Devika picked each of the botanicals. The only thing that topped the storytelling was the Negroni and a lazy Martini that Khalil graciously fixed for us. The distillery is open for visits through prior booking, and if you’re in Goa, it’s an unmissable experience.

Of all the contemporary gins in the market, Tamras is indeed unique with its strong personality. I’d be happy to sip it on ice, as I do with Pumori and Hapusa, or in a Martini, as I do with Stranger & Sons and Terai. Its intense and complex aromas last much further than most other gins. I can sit and imbibe it all day long. 

Retail Price: Goa: Rs 1950, Mumbai: Rs 3200. Coming to Delhi soon.

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Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

Makazai
Makazai

Sugarcane has been growing in India for centuries. We are said to have gifted sugar to the world, and some early renditions of rums too. Our historic texts talk of Shidhu, a drink produced by fermentation and distillation of sugarcane nectar. Marco Polo’s journals from his travels to India in the 14th CE too suggest him enjoying ‘a very good wine of sugar’. Even with such early tryst with rums, India has failed to befriend the spirit. While the other ‘Indians’ in the Carribean have carved a roaring success with them, we’re still wrapped in the nostalgic imbibing of its cheaply made, industrial, fiery avatar. All that is now changing. New homegrown rum brands have charged up the scenes, igniting what could easily be christened India’s homegrown rum revolution.

Rum – A Complex Drink

Anything made from fruits or plants is complex, look at wines, brandies, and agave spirits. Rums are no different, and making them in India can yield further intricate liquids. To begin with, there are 116 varieties of sugarcane in India. Then comes their provenance, seasonality, and the time of harvest that can completely alter the results. India’s dearness to the equator creates a phenomenon called ‘tropical ageing’ which roughly equals one year of barrel ageing here to three years in Scotland! That also implies higher rate of evaporation, aka ‘angel’s share’. And then there’re taxes, duties, levies, excise, etc. All this by no means can result in an inexpensive spirit. Yet, if your ‘desi’ rums carried an excessively affordable price-tag, you’ve been duped.

Indian Rums On The Block

The recently launched Goa-born rums Makazai and Segredo Aldeia and the Indian-international Two Indies are breathing a new life into the Indian rum sector. From careful selection of their raw materials, to minimal intervention in spirit production, captivating storytelling, and sincere branding are all aiming to rebuild our understanding of the spirit. They boast a multi-dimensional personality, rendering them drinkable on their own, and as a worthy base for chic mixes, beyond our favourite rum & cola concoction. And with India being in the middle of its own cocktail renaissance, the latter has become imperative for a brand’s success. Cheaply made booze doesn’t cut it anymore, neither for mixologists, nor consumers.

Aman Thadani, the force behind Fullarton Distilleries, had already introduced a craft gin (Pumori) and whisky (Woodburns) before launching Segredo Aldeia rums. “We looked at the Indian rum category and found only mass-produced brands. Gins were pretty much in the same shape five years ago, but see how well the segment has matured. What gins have done to India, now rums will”, Aman says confidently. Kasturi Banerjee turned to distilling & blending after 16 glorious years in the banking sector, and created Makazai Rum. She realised the paucity of premium Indian rums during a mixology program. Kasturi says “the rum category was already established, we didn’t have to reintroduce it to the drinkers, only add to it. I wanted a rum that I could taste and say ‘I want it’, it didn’t exist, so I created it”. Makazai in Konkani stands for ‘I want’. Nikhil Varma, senior manager for distilling and brands at Amrut Distilleries, says “premium rum is a very niche segment in India, yet quite distorted. Rums sell, there has always been a conversation around them, and now talks are shifting to their quality”.

Indian Rum Market

India has been a huge rum market, mostly driven by price points. The play of the spirit’s historic importance amongst defence professionals in Britain, the Caribbean, Americas, and Australia, has played in India too, pushing a major chunk of sales through defence canteens. Old Monk, created by ex-armyman Colonel VN Mohan, has been the quintessential go-to brand with the likes of McDowells, XXX, Contessa, and Hercules following closely. There have been no rums beyond these mass-produced, dark, sticky, candied ones, taking away the slightest of motivations to look beyond, understand, and upgrade. So this job of providing better liquids was left to international brands. This made India the second biggest market for Bacardi rum, after the US. While they, and Diageo’s Captain Morgan, have been successful at creating semi-premium products, Indian brands have failed at it, which opens a completely uncharted window of opportunity for these new homegrown brands. The desire for lifestyle-oriented, well-seasoned products moved Bacardi to introduce their age-statement rums like the Ocho (eight years) and Diez (ten years) in India. A similar proposition from Indian producers is desired. And the works have already begun.

Segredo Aldeia White + Cafe Rum
Segredo Aldeia White + Cafe Rum

Makazai currently produces two molasses-based rums, sourcing its distillates from Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Their gold rum is au naturel with no tweaks in colour and flavours after being barrel aged in Punjab, while the white is completely unaged. Segredo Aldeia uses a mix of unaged cane and aged jaggery spirits. Even their white rum features portions of the aged spirit, which takes a higher proportion in their unique, and the country’s first, coffee-infused ‘Cafe’ rum. Two Indies puts together a two-year old molasses-based Caribbean rum and a jaggery-made three year old Indian rum. They are allowing the provenance, the quality of the spirit, and the play of nature make a statement on their own, without tweaking the final products with additives. Even though aged rums have charms of their own, Aman believes whites are the real underdogs that often go unappreciated. I concur. 

Breaking Myths And Misconceptions

These new rums are undoubtedly polished propositions, yet, brands have their work cut out. Kasturi believes “rums have been linked to quantity drinking, we’ll have to create quality consciousness”. Aman opines “educating the consumer is a must and rum ticks a lot of boxes that way, from the the story on the label to what’s inside the bottle, its sensorial appreciation, and the theoretical aspects of the spirit”. A real push would be required to unlearn and learn afresh. Nitin Tewari, bar & beverage consultant at BarTrender, who has worked with Bacardi, also suggests investing in busting the myths like its positioning as a winter drink alone. Further, taking learning from gin brands in positioning the spirit as a lifestyle proposition. Nikhil stays conscious though while decoding rums as it can “easily turn complicated, which intimidates the consumer. We need more brands, and more conversations”. Having said that, as Aman noticed, “Indian consumers are willing to experiment and are shifting between spirits, becoming more comfortable with toying with different ways of appreciating their spirits, different proportions, mixers, garnishes, cocktails, etc”.

India has had a long history with rums. It’s time we crafted their better renditions. With world becoming a smaller place, India carving out beautiful, experimental, experiential craft spirits, and consumers dwelling in deeper understanding and appreciation for their tipples, it’s only fair we get our share of glory for our rums too. Makazai, Segredo Aldeia, and Two Indies have birthed the rum revolution, with a handful more eagerly waiting to join the tally. 2022 be an exciting year to see them spread their wings and create the magic that Indian palates have long deserved. 

Goa Prices

Makazai ‘Bartender’s Edition’ White Rum – INR1000, Makazai ‘Tribute Edition’ Gold Rum – INR1300

Segredo Aldeia White Rum – INR1500, Segredo Aldeia Cafe Rum – INR1650

Two Indies Gold Rum – INR675

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Articles Cocktails

Goa’s Dynamic Culinary And Alco-Bev Vibe: A Spirited High

Sunset view of beach party in beach cafe with bottle of rose wine and glasses on the table , GOA, India.

Goa’s dynamic culinary and alco-bev vibe has evolved beyond colourful liqueurs candied Port wines and hole-in-the-wall taverns and beach shacks to set the bar high.

It took me a while to befriend Goa. Coming from fast-paced cities, Goa often seems reluctant to shake out of its slumber. When you don’t seem to fit in, food and drink comfort and help ease you in. Goa, now on my fifth visit, finally did it for me. Its burgeoning culinary and dynamic drinking scene is kindling a new emotion. Craft beers, gins, and rums, exclusive single malts, heritage tagged Feni, nouveau cocktails and modern diners are driving it to become a cosmopolitan second base. All the while, locals tightly hold on to their colourful liqueurs, candied Port wines, hole-in-the- wall bars and taverns, centuries-old, family-run bakeries, and the life of community and susegad

Paul John’s Goa exclusive Select Cask whiskies; Tesouro at Colva with a neighbourhood vibe

City of Gins

The wave that started with Greater Than has indeed gotten greater than we expected. Goa is already home to over 20 gins, rums, and whiskies alone, and many more to come. But nothing’s made its way in to the heart and collection of Indian denizens the way gins have: Pumori, Samsara, Hapusa, Tickle, Seqer, Matinee, GinGin, Stranger & Sons have kept bars buzzing with smashing mixes, endless GinTos, helping keep spirits high even when we were locked in. They’ve all flirted with Indian palates and imagination with a curious mix of botanicals, offered quirky labels that draw from our stories and histories, to quickly become the canvas to draw on.

If your favourite gins don’t feature on your Instagram profile, you qualify to be deemed a social outcast. So Tamras and Doja, the newest entrants, are giving you another chance. Tamras’s visitor’s centre is like nothing you’ve seen in India before. Its minimalistic design, a long tasting-cum-cocktail bar, posh upholstery, and a shiny still that sits as the crown jewel at its helm is arresting from first glance. It’s inspiring others to follow suit with their own tasting rooms and visitor centres, and we learnt that they are. Not just gin, Maka- Zai & Segredo Aldeia rums are taking the myths and misconceptions-filled Indian rum conversation beyond Old Monk—all from Goa.

On the whisky trail

Nearly a decade and a half ago Paul John set up their distillery here. For a while Indians kept craving for their nectars while they exported and collected awards internationally, teasing domestic afficionados with omission rather than submission. But since their Indian release, they’ve reigned on every parade. Now they’ve opened their cellars to visitors, luring with mesmerising hues of oak, sweet wort, and bon gout. Only Goa allows the sale of high-proof spirits and Paul John loves their barrel strength whiskies. Some of their expressions can’t be found anywhere else but here, deeming it a collectors’ paradise. Carry an extra suitcase just to pick from a library of their Zodiac series, Christmas Editions, and Select Cask range. We tasted their in-the-making gins and rums and, phew, you might need to carry two suitcases even!

But why in Goa?

Well, minus the bureaucracy, it’s the unhindered sources of neat waters, favourable conditions for ageing, a spectrum of locally grown botanicals, proximity to ports, abundant natural influences that summons the craft here, and the people with their heritage.

Above all, heritage is celebrated in Goa, not just through its seven UNESCO World Heritage churches, but also in every sip through their copos. The heritage of Cognac, Scotch, and Tequila meets Feni here. All those picturesque coconut tree lined streets that fill your feeds stand tall as testaments of Feni tightly knitting together Goa’s communities that have survived centuries. It was a 14-year-old Dutch spy who mentioned coconut Feni in his journals, way back in 1545, not much has changed since then. It’s still produced under virgin skies, in handmade earthen pots, sans measurements and scientific equipment. When the Portuguese arrived in India, they brought along cashew trees that bore poisonous fruits that could burn your skin at first touch until they fully ripen. With their patience Goans turned even that into a delectable drink.

Hotels or taverns, feni highballs, negronis, margaritas are everywhere, and it’s just so easy to fall for them. Rustic, earthy, at times fiery, umamidriven Fenis are a celebration of the Goan spirit and grounded lifestyle. Hansel Vaz, a local legend, has singlehandedly elevated the image of Feni the world over through Cazulo. When in Goa, a visit to their humbling setup is a must.

Witnessing the birth of a Feni from fruit to spirit, in the most unique, rural, instinctive, and nature-reliant way is unparalleled. And tasting Fenis in the middle of a lagoon while countless little fish tickle and pedicure your tired feet as continue your grub crawl on a local spread is utterly gratifying.

Happy Hour

Bars like Tesouro by Firefly in Colva are presenting Feni in renditions that’s catching international attention. An entire menu is dedicated to Feni cocktails. But this nouveau neighbourhood Colva bar is way more than that. Debuting on the World’s 50 Best Bars at No. 65 this year, Tesouro is a treasure. Don’t be fooled by its relaxed vibe, the effort behind their mixes is maddening. Pankaj Balachandran and Arijit Bose are taking Pina Coladas, Mojitos, and LIITs out of patrons’ hands and replacing them with niche and suave Midnight Brekkie, Heisenberg, G.O.A.T, and Salcette Salsa. If that wasn’t enough, they’re also part of the team behind India’s first ready-to-serve Jerry’s Cocktails. Now you don’t only drink in Goa, you take them along.

Mahe, Felix, Jamming Goat, Petisco, Antonio@31, Makatsu, Miguels, Antares, Saz, Bomras, Cavatina, and so many more have all added to the cosmopolitan culinary culture of the city. And with a diaspora of acclaimed brands and hospitality professionals relocating to Goa during Covid, like Balachandran and Bose, it’s bound to add many Michelin-worthy stops on your lists. But all of them don’t have to be fancy. Taverns and small classics like Joseph Bar often dot tourist maps. A growing culture of food trucks and Ros Omelette hawkers continue to deliver a local flavour of their own kind. Uncle Chef, Food Engine, Oppa Food Truck, Euseb’s Grubhub, Noronha’s Corner, are just a few who will spoil you with their beef chilly poee, chorizo pao, roast pork, croquettes and sausages. After a spirited night, you need them for sure, for your soul, and pocket. After all, you have to save for those bottles to carry back home as well.

 

First Published In IndiaToday, 2022

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Articles Spirits TippleTalk Trade

7 Craft Gins For The Discerning Indian

Our list of homegrown gins that signal the start of…

The gin craze in the country is widely believed to have started in 2017 with the launch of  Greater Than by Nao Spirits, India’s first legit craft gin. It sparked a wave of launches of locally made gins, with more than a dozen of them now jostling for space on the shelves in the local alcohol store.

As it invariably happens, tastes evolve, and gin enthusiasts are currently looking for something different and refined. Indian gin distillers are responding with innovative manufacturing processes, better botanicals and never-seen-before ingredients, sourced indigenously and from abroad.

Many of them have launched (or are ready to launch) the second(and in some cases second and third) variations of their flagship brands. Here’s our list of gins for the discerning Indian drinker:

Greater Than X Sleepy Owl – No Sleep Gin

No Sleep Gin

Juniper Bomb was their first limited release gin which left bartenders and gin enthusiasts equally excited. And now that the consumer has become more discerning, Nao Spirits has a new gin that will help you even beat sleep. Ah, stay awake so you can drink more, brilliant idea, I say! The country’s first coffee-infused gin, No Sleep brings together India’s two fastest-growing beverages – gin and coffee – to create an exciting mix. It is devoid of any added colour, flavour, sugars, or extracts.

The gin distillates are infused with Sleepy Owl’s cold brew resulting in a bold coffee aroma complemented by the crispness of GT. Drink it as GinTo with a slice of orange, a Negroni (with Disaronno), or even an espresso martini; the choices are endless. I like to sip it just neat.

Rs 1000 in Goa, Rs 1850 in Mumbai

Pumori Ascent Barrel Aged Gin

Pumori Ascent Barrel Aged Gin

The good people behind Pumori gin, Woodburns whisky, & Segredo Aldeia rums at Fullarton Distilleries are soon launching the country’s first barrel-aged gin. It’ll boast of 12 carefully selected botanicals distilled in small 200-litres tanks that allow the distiller to keep a close watch on the process.

It is then aged for about a year in American oak whisky barrels before being bottled. The gin’s personality gleams with the character of the local Himalayan juniper—  rustic, woody, with a feel of an early morning forest walk in the mountains.

Price:  TBC, release expected around February

Gin Jiji Darjeeling Dry

Gin Jiji Darjeeling Dry

Boasting a GI tag for its heritage, Darjeeling tea is arguably the best tea globally. Add to that the essence of Himalayan juniper that’s unlike any other in the world, one that can only be foraged and not be cultivated. Gin Jiji is the result. But it is much more than that. It marries Himalayan and Macedonian junipers with a mélange of other Indian botanicals.

You can taste the tannins and mouthfeel of tea, punctuated with the aroma of the botanicals. The subtle spirit is an open canvas when it comes to how it should be consumed — with tonic, garnishes, or any other way you think is right.

Not available in India yet. Keep an eye on the shelves for a surprise.

Perry Road Peru

Perry Road Peru

Teaming up with the culinary greats of Bombay Canteen, Stranger & Sons created India’s first distilled cocktail with pink guavas, aka Peru, as the star. It was launched at the end of 2020 as a  limited edition release. It was a runaway success and now returns for a more extensive nationwide release.

The delicious flavours of fresh perus meet the usual gin botanicals served with a generous dose of chilli-salt mix. Drink it by itself in a coupe/cocktail glass,  over ice, or in a highball with a splash of tonic. Grab a bottle or two when you see it. Even this new edition is a limited release.

Rs 2999 in Mumbai

Spice Trade & Trading Tides

Spice Trade & Trading Tides

These two gins represent the first global collaboration for an Indian gin, a celebration of growing trading links between India and Australia. Spice Trade is the lovechild of Stranger & Sons and the makers of the Aussie Four Pillars gin, part of the latter’s Distillers Series collaboration.

Stranger & Sons provided a select few local botanicals, including Teppal (Goan take on Szechuan pepper), black cardamom, and chillies, to which the Aussies added macadamia, cashews nuts, and lemon myrtle, amongst others, to craft a unique international spirit. To honour the Indian Ocean connecting the two countries, we suggest it be served with a garnish of lime and a pinch of salt.

For Trading Tides, the Aussies sent their basket of botanicals, including lemon myrtle, anise myrtle, and river mint. The Indians added desi mangosteen, kokum, and tamarind, etc. The result is an uber-cool Indian international gin that’s an easy sipper and an effortless charmer. A limited supply of both is expected to hit the shelves soon.

Approx Rs 3500 in Mumbai

Samsara The City of Pink Gin

Samsara The City of Pink Gin

The aromatic Samsara was already a crowd-pleaser, and now a new buddy makes things even more exciting. By introducing India’s first pink gin, Samsara has opened a category that is only bound to grow. Keeping Samsara’s original gin as the base, Aditya Aggarwal and his Goa-based team at Spaceman Spirit Lab have added nuances of rose petals, strawberries, hibiscus, etc., to create an exquisite new gin.

I’d drink it neat and chilled for its aromatic appeal alone. If not straight up, try it with a splash of prosecco or lemonade, which awakens the essences and delivers a perfumed glassful. At 37% abv, it is advisable to have just a single-serve, as long as you can resist the lure of a great gin.

Rs 1800 in Goa 

(Image Sources: Maria Avdeeva (Unsplash), Spaceman Spirits Lab, NAO Spirits, Fullarton Distilleries, High Road Spirits, Stranger & Sons, Four Pillars)

 

First published in MansWorldIndia, February 2022

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Articles Cocktails Conversations Events + Affairs Spirits TippleTalk Trade

Coffee Meets Alcohol: The Best Of Both Worlds

There’s something civilised about drinking a cocktail. And during the lockdown, we needed it more than ever to distract us from the boredom. Another drink that kept us sane and cheery was coffee. I can’t imagine starting my day without a crisp cup of medium roast, pour-over, that’s preferably from an Indian estate. It wasn’t surprising then that someone had the idea of combining these two lifesavers — coffee and alcohol to make one single drink. The most-consumed cocktail during the pandemic was the Espresso Martini!

Over the last decade, the surging popularity of coffee and cocktails have resulted in innovations among vendors and helped us better our appreciation and understanding of these products. Words like craft roasters, single-lot coffees, grinds, roasts, brewing techniques, nitros, AeroPress and pour-overs, have become a part of our vocabulary and changed the way we consume our favourite beverage. A similar change has been underway in the alcohol and cocktail space as well. Mixers, syrups, tonics, craft beer are now part of everyday conversations. 

The coming together of the two fast-growing craft segments have resulted in a new breed of drinks like the Espresso Martini. And it is just the beginning of what is promising to be an excellent future for coffee-accented tipples.

Nitin Vishwas of Moonshine Meadery breaks this phenomenon down. He says the specialty coffee brands have done a ton to educate the consumer. “They’ve been pushing the envelope and making big waves. So have been the craft alcobev producers. It’s only natural for them to come together,” he explains. 

Aman Thadani of Fullerton Distilleries declares that doing something with coffee was always a part of his plan. He sees an overlap in consumers of the two beverages. “Mixing coffee and craft alcobevs isn’t new, and with the craft spirit movement in India growing in confidence, it is only natural for them to try new things,” he says. 

Here we look at a few exciting new products in the market that do a good job of combining coffee with alcohol. 

Malabar Stout

Bira 91 and Blue Tokai joined hands to put an Indian coffee-accented brew on the world map. The limited-release Malabar Stout is a celebration of the coming together of the Indian craft beer movement and the beautiful coffees of South India. The rich, malty stout with a chocolate flavor that India loves gets a power-packed, aromatic, cold brew boost from select south Indian coffee estates. Bira 91 founder Ankur Jain kept coffee at the centre of the recipe while crafting a beer that accentuates its nuances. The result is an outstanding brew that is robust and impressive. It has a creamy feel and a chewy, malty character. The acidity in the cold brew cleans the palate and makes you return for the next sip. (Mumbai: Rs 170, Bengaluru: Rs 130, Noida: Rs 120)

Coffee Mead and The Collab Project X Subko Specialty Coffee

Mead is not beer. It is largely unknown in India though we created and gifted it to the world; think of soma from the Vedas! Pune-based Moonshine Meadery is the pioneer of modern-day mead in India and probably Asia. Besides their traditional mead, which is a fermented honey drink, they have crafted a coffee mead – a combination of the founders’ two first loves. While Nitin Vishwas is a coffee fanatic, Rohan Rehani is not just an enthusiast but he’s also part of the jury at the Indian Aeropress Championship. 

During their home-brewing days, Nitin threw a handful of coffee beans in his traditional mead, and the result was an instant wow! Their friends loved it, and the founders knew they were on to something. The soft, mild taste showed what a good coffee and a well-made mead could do together. Meads are gluten-free, vegan, with honey at its base, and environment friendly — easily amongst the most sustainable drinks. Pair it with coffee, and you have a morally conscious morning in a glass!

Later, when Rahul Reddy of Mumbai-based Subko Specialised Coffee Roasters reached out to them to get one a project together, it led to a ‘collab series’, the results of which are now sold under the brand name ‘The Collab Project X Subko Specialty Coffee’. It was done in a true spirit of cooperation. Rohan’s company aged the raw green coffee beans in a traditional mead and sent it back to Subko. It was dried and roasted there (they even turned part of it into a coffee, which was on the Subko menu for a few days. I was lucky to be in Mumbai at that time and I loved it). The coffee beans were coarse-ground by Subko and returned to Moonshine to be turned into a specialty mead! The result? A concoction with a boastful coffee character and nuanced notes, one that needs time to open up and patience to appreciate. If it were a wine, I would’ve decanted and let it breathe before sipping — not straight from the bottle, but in a wine glass, at room temperature, like how a fine tipple deserves to be had. The current lot is a limited edition of 1000 bottles. But I am told new coffee meads are on their way. (Coffee Mead, Mumbai: Rs 185, Goa: Rs 140; The Collab Project X Subko Specialty Coffee, Mumbai: Rs 240)

Greater Than Coffee Negroni/Gin

No craft spirit wave has been as impressive as the gin revolution in India. Greater Than, from Goa-based Nao Spirits, was among the earliest to innovate in the game with their limited-release Juniper Bomb. Launched in 2017, Greater Than was India’s first craft London Dry Gin, and there is always an expectation from the founders of the company to up their game. With the pandemic pushing everyone indoors, it allowed them to go loco with experiments.

Co-founder Anand Virmani remembers his distillers bringing him a carton of experimental distils, of which coffee-infused ones instantly stood out. Having experimented with pink gins, juniper styles, citruses, and spices, coffee was a no-brainer for Virmani. At their `bar-takeovers’ across the country, during the early marketing days of Greater Than, he had served a signature cocktail of gin, tonic water, and a cold-brew float called ‘No Sleep G&T’. To create a Coffee Negroni, they reached out to coffee maker Sleepy Owl to source medium roast beans from Chikamagalur. The beans were steeped in water for about two days to create a sturdy cold brew, and then, instead of cutting the distillates with demineralised water as is the norm, it was cut with this strong cold brew. The result is a gin mix with no added sugars, colours, or flavours, except for the crisp and bold coffee expression and fruitiness. It can be drunk with a splash of tonic, an espresso martini, or as a cool coffee Negroni. (Goa: Rs 1,000, Bengaluru Rs 2,400, Mumbai Rs 1,850)

Segredo Aldeia Cafe Rum

Gin may have got all the attention these days, but there is as much action on the rum front too. And among the more popular recent launches has been Segredo Aldeia cafe and white rums from Aman Thadani’s Goa-based Fullarton Distilleries, which also makes the Pumori gin. Aman is also a coffee enthusiast, so it was only a matter of time before he began experimenting with a coffee-rum combination. 

Single-origin coffee beans were sourced from South India, dark roasted, and later infused and sweetened with cane sugar. This jaggery spirit was aged in ex-Bourbon casks and mixed with unaged cane spirit made in a rustic Rhum Agricole style. The process gives the resulting alcohol a ton of complexity, making it a fun yet serious spirit. Infusing whole beans provides a mix of coffee, cocoa, and rustic savoury characters. The sweetness makes it easy on the palate. Keep it in the freezer and pour a dram for yourself from time to time. A splash of water unfolds the spirit, opening it to full bloom. Cafe Rum is like a breath of fresh air on the Indian alcohol shelves, boasting of a new age craft distillers’ sense of confidence and the gentle push to the consumers to try something out of the box.  (Goa: Rs 1,650)

All things said, there is no saying how long this coffee-infused alcohol trend will last. According to Vishwas, overcomplicating the drink might cause the consumers to shy away from trying them. The aim should be to bring the nuances of the two craft beverages together in a way that is simple and easy to decipher.

First Published in Mans World India ,2022

Categories
Articles Cocktails Conversations Events + Affairs Spirits TippleTalk Trade

8 Perfect Japanese Whiskies To Add To Your Bar

2B8JF36 Whisky casks in the Yamazaki Distillery in Mishima, Osaka, Japan.

The world’s biggest whisky market is taking to Japanese whisky with much enthusiasm, though the high prices are a significant barrier.

It is something unique to well-crafted Japanese whiskies — mysticism often supersedes their personality. They enjoy a somewhat cult following, so much so that spotting them on the shelf is at times a rarity. I thought that was an exaggeration until my brother, who was on a business trip to Japan, couldn’t score two bottles of the most decent pickups. But now, as the heart grows dearer for Japanese whiskies, so does their lineup. More brands are being launched in India than anyone would have thought even a few years ago.

After nearly a century of importing and bottling Scotch, the Japanese have, in recent times, moved towards creating unique Japanese whiskies with their own rules and appellations. It stipulates that to be labelled ‘Japanese whisky’, the spirit must be distilled from malted barley, using local water, and be fermented, distilled, aged, and bottled in Japan. They must also be aged in wooden casks for three years and bottled at a minimum of 40 per cent abv.

But what makes them so special? Firstly, when it comes to fauna, fresh air, and water, which are the backbone of any spirit production endeavour, Japan is as uniquely placed as Scotland. The vegetation and climate in the northern stretches of the country are quite like that of Scotland. However, the country’s four distinct seasons — spring, summer, fall, and winter — infuse Japanese whisky some unique characteristics that make it different from Scotch. Add to this the minerals-free water that is a Japanese speciality and the distinctly Japanese wood obtained from Mizunara trees used for making the casks in which the whisky is aged. The Mizunara, also known as Japanese oak, has to be 200 years old before its wood is turned into whisky casks, making them as rare as the whisky.

Then, there is the secrecy of the Japanese distillers. Whereas in Scotland, distillers freely exchange their liquids for making blended whiskies, the Japanese keep their library secret and are loathe to trade. All this is complemented by the country’s famously perfectionist approach to everything. Despite all this, however, it was only in 2014 when whisky guru Jim Murray declared Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 to be the World Whiskey of the Year in his Whiskey Bible 2015 that the world discovered Japanese whisky. Demand has since soared to a level that has consistently exceeded supply, making them rare and more desirable.

Indian taxes are enough to mar the joy of a good spirit making Japanese whiskies out of reach of most unless you buy them from Duty Free. Further, fine Japanese whiskies are allocated to India in such small numbers that their tag often supersedes their value, landing in the hands of only a few. Who’s to stop Indians from enjoying a discerning dram? A few years ago, Beam Suntory introduced their Yamazaki 12-year-old Single Malt and Hibiki 17 Blended whisky in India, and last year came Toki, their more value-for-money proposition. And a few months ago, the company announced the launch of two limited edition labels in Indian Duty-Free stores. Now, Peak Spirits have announced the arrival of Komagatake Single Malt & Iwai Whiskies from Japan’s highest located Mars Shinshu Distillery in the Indian market.

So, what should you be relishing, you ask? Here’s what’s on our shopping list:

YAMAZAKI 55 YEARS OLD

Rs 46,59,000 (Duty Free)

Probably the most expensive whisky sold in India, it is a blend of precious single malts originally crafted by the founder, Shinjiro Torii, in 1960, and the oldest release in the house’s history. The spirit has been aged for over 55 years in Mizunara (Japanese) oak, and finally finished in white oak. A lot of 100 bottles was first released locally, and now the second batch of 100 is travelling around the world, some docking in Indian Duty-Free. The signature depth, complexity, and finesse from the house of Suntory create its foundation, further accentuated with the play of time and nature. You’re not drinking whiskey; you’re drinking history, and the continuity of a family’s guarded tradition over generations.

YAMAZAKI 55 YEARS OLD

HIBIKI 21 YEARS OLD

Rs 49,990 (Duty-Free)

Called the pinnacle of the art of Japanese whiskies, Hibiki 21 is also a limited release that’s reached India only recently, with a limited supply. A blend of grain and malt whiskies, Hibiki means harmony in Japanese, which is precisely what it delivers. It’s a celebration of the fine art of putting numerous fine spirits together to create one that inspires.

HIBIKI 21 YEARS OLD

YAMAZAKI 12 YEARS OLD

Rs 11,000 (Gurugram)

A product of Japan’s pioneering single malt distillery, Yamazaki expresses the melange of fruits, earth, and the famed Mizunara oak hues. There’s a burst of tropical fruits that make way for sweet spices and citruses, ending on Japanese oak perfume. For many, this is the very definition of Japanese whisky in India, and deservingly so.

YAMAZAKI 12 YEARS OLD

HIBIKI HARMONY

Rs 10,500 (Gurugram)

Created in 1989, the Hibiki label is a testimony to the meticulous art of putting the finest spirits together. The balance has made it amongst the world’s most prestigious and honoured whiskies. The sweet notes of honey, candied citruses, and white chocolate, marry with those of rich florals, expressing their personality over a long finish, completed by the signature Mizunara oak. When in doubt, turn to Hibiki Harmony with a dash of water, and it’ll liven up the palate.

HIBIKI HARMONY

TOKI

Rs 3,200 (Gurugram)

This is the most accessible Japanese whisky in the Indian market currently. A blended spirit, it’s an effortless sipper with all the pillars that a Japanese whisky stands on. A non-age statement from the house, it offers a mysterious play of bittersweet citruses, basil peppermint freshness, ending on a somewhat familiar tone of oak, pepper, and ginger. Serve it as a highball with juliennes of ginger and an orange slice, and let it show what Japanese youth in a bottle is.

TOKI

IWAI MARS WHISKY

Rs 4,500 (Gurugram)

Made in Japan’s highest located distiller, it was crafted by Kiichiro Iwai and draws inspiration from the greatest of American whiskies. Made primarily from corn, followed by malt and rye, aged in ex-Bourbon barrels, Iwai is quintessentially East meets West. Drink it a highball, a Bourbon Julep, or an Old Fashioned, and see it shine.

IWAI MARS WHISKY

IWAI TRADITION MARS WHISKY

Rs 5,500 (Gurugram)

Inspired from the blended Scotch template, Iwai Tradition captures the confluence of malts that are carefully aged in a mix of Sherry, Bourbon, and Wine casks, accentuated with a kiss of peat at the very end. The result — tartness of cherries, the sweetness of toffee, and the lingering flirt of ginger & spices.

IWAI TRADITION MARS WHISKY

KOMAGATAKE SINGLE MALT WHISKY

Rs 19,000 (Gurugram)

Located between Japan’s soaring Southern Alps and the towering Central Alps, at just over 2,600 feet, the Mars Shinshu distillery enjoys a cool temperature, offering slow maturation and an abundance of soft granite filtered snowmelt fed aquifers. Considered amongst the rarest of Japanese whiskies, its label changes every year along with its blend. It opens with a burst of sweet flavours of quince, melon, and tropical fruits, leading to nuttiness, of which hazelnut dominates, a Sherry oxidative hue, and a pleasantly smooth finish.

KOMAGATAKE SINGLE MALT WHISKY

First published in Mans World India , 2021

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Whether Shaken or Stirred, There’s Nothing As A Well – Mixed Cocktail

We can’t call it a complete pandemic after all. There’s some tasteful good that’s come out of it. The time off has allowed creative minds to put their ideas to play and it shows in the burgeoning Indian alco-bev space – exciting new gins, releasing craft rums, and a plethora of mixers crowding the shelves. And now, breaking the chain of conservative cocktail consumption are the new breed of bottled and canned cocktails, aka ready-to-serve (RTS). Mr Jerry’s & InACan cocktails are changing the way we perceive and imbibe our cocktails outside of those bars that have unfortunately remained shut most of this while.

 

It’s not a new category, rather it’s been a dominant one, especially for the giants. Smirnoff, Bacardi, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Absolut, and Malibu have already been animating the scenes with these mixes for decades. The global RTS cocktails market was valued at USD650 million in 2019, and was to grow at a pace of 21% till 2024. However, the onset of global lockdown has shifted the patterns and sent the segment on a skyrocketing trajectory, some now expecting it to garner valuations upto USD32 billion by 2024 closing. Our two homegrown Goa-based brands have brought India to add to this revolution.

Mr. Jerry's Cocktail

The sparks of genius flew during the first lockdown, in 2020, when spouses Mrinal Manu & Rincy Verghese couldn’t step out to meet their buddies over a few drams in true Goan fashion. “One evening we had Arijit Bose over. As usual he took over the bar and made some cool drinks, and we happened to discuss how fun it’d be to have a bottle of cocktail which we just open and pour and get a bar quality drink with perfection anytime”, recalls Rincy, co-founder of Mr. Jerry’s. 

From a casual discussion, things started moving fast, with phases of trials between the undisputed cocktail prince of India, Bose, and the suave ambassador of spirited times, Pankaj Balachandran, at their setup, CounterTop. “Sourcing the right ingredients wasn’t a challenge since at Blue Ocean Beverages, we make heaps of spirits and bottles for many major Indian-international brands”, says Rincy. Pankaj adds, “we decided to come up with cocktails that everyone could relate to. We created all the flavours in-house, and to maintain the authenticity of flavours we use some standard branded ingredients as well.” The first lot of Mr. Jerry’s offers 6 varieties in neat 500ml packs offering about 5 serves each at mere INR550. That’s a steal! LIIT was an obvious choice, Mrinal pushed for an Old Fashioned, Pankaj was adamant on doing a Negroni, a Cucumber Elderflower Fizz adheres to the growing gin craze, and then there are the crowd pleasing Espresso Martini & Mai Tai.

 

An ode to the great grandfather of mixology, Mr. Jerry P. Thomas, the concept was designed to please with ease. Partially because of the lockdown, the focus has stayed on capturing the retail market. “You don’t have to go out for a swanky drink, simply stay home, get Mr. Jerry’s, follow the instructions, and experience a great cocktail with precession”, Rincy exclaims. During the year-end tourist rush, they have also noted a demand from small bars who wish to serve great cocktails but don’t have an elaborate setup or a great mixologist to execute. Also, beach shacks that generally serve great food and chilled beers have taken a shine towards these cocktails. “They become efficient, limit their waste, don’t need expert staff, and earn a decent margin on these already well-crafted mixes, it’s a winner”, Pankaj observes.

Outside of Goa, Mr. Jerry’s is already making waves in Mumbai and Bengaluru. They’ve received a great welcome, especially thanks to their allowance of home delivering alcohol. And not just a few local cities, Mr. Jerry’s has already caught the attention of a few fine palates abroad and the talks are on!

Their cocktails range between 20-33% abv, and aren’t your typical rip & sip proposition. I loved their Espresso Martini, Negroni, and the Old Fashioned. And maybe since I’m going through a Mai Tai phase, it was my favourite, with all those sweet spices & nuttiness. An excited Pankaj spilled the beans and alerted me to anticipate new flavours coming out later in the year. Shhh… you didn’t hear that. 

In A Can Cocktails

The first canned cocktail in India, InACan, is putting convenience and portability first. Brainchild of Sameer Mirajkar & sommelier Viraj Sawant, the idea was conceived first in March 2020, with exhaustive R&D, foraging ingredients of provenance, that would elevate the resultant outcome. The Pune-based duo brought in the Mumbai-based champion mixologist Varun Sudhakar for product innovation and carefully fixing the mixes. With three rounds of tasting over 200 samples, created at their Goa facility, the trio fixed on 5 essential flavours – LIIT, rosemary-spiked Gin&Tonic, Whisky Collin with apple and cinnamon, a refreshing Vodka Mule, and Rum Latte which is their take on rum & cola with a twist of hazelnut. Apart from being in a can, all the drinks are carbonated, and use only natural ingredients, weigh less than 100 calories per serve, and are at a low spirited point of 9-13% abv. And at INR140 for a 250ml serve, they’re taking all the reasons why not give it a go.

 

Viraj recalls that they didn’t ever think of getting into cocktails per se, the idea was to take something conventional and innovate it. Convenience and portability of RTSs offers consumers safe access to high-quality cocktails amidst bar and restaurant restrictions. “All big countries are moving towards this segment. In 2019-2020, RTS cocktails have seen a 100x growth in SE Asia, Europe, America, and Australia. Companies like Bacardi are having a hard time keeping their products on the shelves”, Viraj comments. “While getting into this, we knew it’ll be an uphill task for a year or so, there are some obvious challenges there, but that’s everywhere”, he adds.

 

When Varun joined the team, he shared his idea with the duo of recreating a cocktail bar experience at home. They concurred about creating a quality product first, and then working out the pricing. And now that it’s already launched in Goa with exceptional success, Viraj already sees the possibility of placing them at banquets, mini bars, brunches, pool parties, in the travel sector, and at music festivals. “Opportunities are endless”, he adds. 

The mixes are meant to be drunk straight from the can, and taste even better from the glass. Rum latte was my favourite with whisky collins a close second, and the vodka mule definitely earning commendations. 

The Future

Lovers of craft beer and artisanal wines have readymade options at retail stores; cocktail fans don’t. Mr. Jerry’s and InACan have added to their choices. Consumers are driving the demand for ease, portability, and quality. RTS cocktails fit into their busy lifestyle and still taste as good as they did at their neighbourhood bars. And it’s an unprecedented era for cocktail drinking in India. Our mixology game has gone up and consumers have become conscious about what they put in their bodies, stories behind their drinks, their origins, the right etiquettes, etc. To deliver all that with ease, and class, without sacrificing the quality is the absolute key. And just as they’ve adapted to working from home, they’ve found ways to enhance entertainment and social occasions at home as well. After all, there’s something about drinking a cocktail that makes one feel civilised and it’s particularly reassuring during the time of a global pandemic. 

First published in Sommelier India The Wine Magazine